If they were alive today...

....these notables would be celebrating their birthday:

Wallace Reid would be 120.  Of all the male silent film stars, he was, perhaps the most charming, likeable, athletic and certainly the most handsome of them all.  But he was also the subject of one of Hollywood's first jaw-dropping scandals, when he died of illness related to his rampant addiction to opiates.  He was only 31 when he died in a sanitarium, and at the height of his fame, hopelessly addicted to pain medication.  He became hooked on opiates in the aftermath of a major train accident while filming a scene for one of his "action-adventure" films.  Since his image was that of the wholesome "guy-next-door," the world was truly shocked and his drug addiction and death remained a headline story for many weeks in 1923.  Sadly, he's mostly forgotten today (except for his scandalous death), since most of his films have disintegrated into dust.  But viewing the still-extant footage from the few films that survive, he was, indeed, a most appealing actor.

Da Vinci:  A self-portrait

Portrait of a Musician

St. John the Baptist



Portrait of Cecilia Gallarani: Lady with an Ermine

Leonardo da Vinci would be 559.  The term "renaissance man" may have been coined in reference to him:  Painter, sculptor, inventor, engineer, writer, architect...was there anything this man couldn't do flawlessly?  Certainly, he's best known from his paintings, most famously La Gioconda (The Mona Lisa) and The Last Supper.  But, interestingly, he was not at all a prolific painter:  He only left 30 known paintings, several of them unfinished.  And did you know that he was a vegetarian (for humanitarian reasons), a highly unusual stance in the 16th century.

The People of Chilmark, 1920



Hollywood, 1937

Self portrait

Thomas Hart Benton would be 122.  The great American artist created a singular, highly-recognizable style in his many epic murals of everyday life in 1930's America.

Bessie Smith would be 117.  The "Queen of the Blues," Bessie Smith's own life was one of sadness and tragedy.  But she left a large number of recordings, which prove her to be one of the greatest singers of the 20th century, and greatly influential on nearly all blues singers who have followed.  She was killed in a Mississippi highway accident at the age of 41.